Publishing a book for children

[Pelado]

Anyone have any experience with any facet of getting a children's book published?

I played a rhyming game at bed time with my 8-year-old earlier this week that led me to write a 650-word story that could be used as a children's picture book. The story is about Fred and his brother Ned who use their collective imaginations to ride a sled to the Planet Zed.

Illustration is way beyond my skill set, but might be right up my younger brother's alley. He's interested in giving it a shot.

I'm guessing that the e-reader market doesn't work that well for picture books, so it would probably need to be published on actual paper.

Who should I be talking to? What are my next steps?

[wuapinmon]

Anyone have any experience with any facet of getting a children's book published?

I played a rhyming game at bed time with my 8-year-old earlier this week that led me to write a 650-word story that could be used as a children's picture book. The story is about Fred and his brother Ned who use their collective imaginations to ride a sled to the Planet Zed.

Illustration is way beyond my skill set, but might be right up my younger brother's alley. He's interested in giving it a shot.

I'm guessing that the e-reader market doesn't work that well for picture books, so it would probably need to be published on actual paper.

Who should I be talking to? What are my next steps?

I published 200 copies of a book with these guys in 2001 and again in 2002. They did a great job. If you wanted to self-publish, Quark Xpress is a good desktop publisher and MC Printing can publish Quark files. https://www.facebook.com/MC-Printing-200325633489551/

[LiveCoug]

Is that when you said
to go to bed
but then you fell and hit your head
'til it bled
and turned the carpet red?

This is fun! Good for you. Publish away. Your kids will love it.

[Pelado]

I published 200 copies of a book with these guys in 2001 and again in 2002. They did a great job. If you wanted to self-publish, Quark Xpress is a good desktop publisher and MC Printing can publish Quark files. https://www.facebook.com/MC-Printing-200325633489551/

Thanks. What type of book did you publish with them - novel, children's book, etc.? Do you remember the cost?

Is that when you said
to go to bed
but then you fell and hit your head
'til it bled
and turned the carpet red?

This is fun! Good for you. Publish away. Your kids will love it.

I used all of those rhyming words except bled. I didn't see a way to use without it feeling force fed. Without using bled I may have lost some street cred.

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[Donuthole]

Here's my constructive criticism: 650 words is a lot (like a lot lot) for a picture book that I'm going to read to my kids. In fact, when it comes to story time, I'm definitely avoiding that book at all costs. Maybe you love your kids more than I love mine. So be it. But if you want to move books, that's just too long.

[Pelado]

Here's my constructive criticism: 650 words is a lot (like a lot lot) for a picture book that I'm going to read to my kids. In fact, when it comes to story time, I'm definitely avoiding that book at all costs. Maybe you love your kids more than I love mine. So be it. But if you want to move books, that's just too long.

They're small words.

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[Pelado]

Here's my constructive criticism: 650 words is a lot (like a lot lot) for a picture book that I'm going to read to my kids. In fact, when it comes to story time, I'm definitely avoiding that book at all costs. Maybe you love your kids more than I love mine. So be it. But if you want to move books, that's just too long.

So I've made some edits that make it shorter - about 540 words now. Makes it a little easier for parents to read at bedtime and makes it easier for my brother to illustrate.

Another big change is that I converted a character from Fred to Merced (though I don't mention the conversion in the text). Anyone know any other girl names that rhyme with Fred (other than Winifred)?

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[Pelado]

Here's a portion of the story with a rough draft sample from my brother's art (when he drew this, we were still planning on it being Fred and Ned instead of Merced and Ned):

A girl named Merced
Had a brother called Ned
With a stuffed bear, Ted

Merced and Ned found a wooden sled
That had been painted red
Sitting outside right by the shed

Merced placed a helmet on top of each head,
Pulling Ned and Ted onto the red sled
"On to Planet Zed" they said

The sled headed up, to the sky it led
Faster and faster and faster it sped

They went so fast the sled began to shred

Suddenly the red sled stopped dead

From beyond they heard a voice that said
“Make way for King Jed!"

Along came King Jed riding a horse dressed in red
At the front of a procession he led
He stopped at Merced and Ned and Ted and said
"You're new here, come to my palace for bread."

So Merced and Ned grabbed Ted
And jumped on a horse led by Achmed,
The royal horseman of King Jed

For many miles the horse did tread
Until they arrived at the palace of King Jed

They entered the dining hall, surprised at the spread
King Jed must have had every last kind of bread

IMG_20170821_003824.jpg

[Pelado]

I was thinking to try and jump-start this process again. To Donuthole's point, I still need to pare down the story length some more. Then I need to either get my brother to start illustrating or find somebody else. I did learn about a resource that could cut down the production cost/risk - Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing:

Self-publish eBooks and paperbacks for free with Kindle Direct Publishing, and reach millions of readers on Amazon.

Get to market fast. Publishing takes less than 5 minutes and your book appears on Kindle stores worldwide within 24-48 hours.

Make more money. Earn up to 70% royalty on sales to customers in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, India, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and more. Enroll in KDP Select and earn more money through Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.

Keep control. Keep control of your rights and set your own list prices. Make changes to your books at any time.

Publish in digital and print. Publish Kindle eBooks and paperbacks for free on KDP.

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/

Any of you think this book could have a market? Any ideas on the style of illustration that would be most appropriate? Any constructive (who am I kidding, this is CS) criticism you'd be willing to give on what I've shared so far?

Anyone else written anything you'd like to publish?

[Pelado]

I was thinking to try and jump-start this process again. To Donuthole's point, I still need to pare down the story length some more. Then I need to either get my brother to start illustrating or find somebody else. I did learn about a resource that could cut down the production cost/risk - Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing:



https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/

Any of you think this book could have a market? Any ideas on the style of illustration that would be most appropriate? Any constructive (who am I kidding, this is CS) criticism you'd be willing to give on what I've shared so far?

Anyone else written anything you'd like to publish?

Anyone publish anything lately?

[mtnbiker]

Anyone publish anything lately?

My wife has a number of children's books available, and is working on another. See debbiesmithbooks.com or buy on Amazon.

[Pelado]

My wife has a number of children's books available, and is working on another. See debbiesmithbooks.com or buy on Amazon.

Cool. What program(s) does she use to create the books?

I'm using Kindle Kids' Book Creator for the ebook which outputs to a mobi file. But for the paperback on demand, Amazon won't accept that format, they prefer pdf. I tried using an online file converter to go from mobi to pdf, but the output was crap.

[mtnbiker]

She uses CorelDraw, because that was what was available years ago via an educator's discount through my daughter who was in college at the time. She likes the freehand capabilities, plus it's a one-time purchase, but it does have some bugs. Adobe Illustrator, as she understands it, can either be used by agreeing to continuing payments (like a lease) or purchased at full price.

[tooblue]

I have self published ...

I have self-published a few books, small editions only. I prefer to use Blurb.com. They are more expensive, but the end product quality is excellent. Regardless the service you use, there are a few things to which you should pay attention.

First, I am well versed in all of the Adobe software (I teach the software so I need to be). I use Photoshop to create and edit images, Illustrator to sometimes create the illustrations or to create specific graphics for the layouts (in this example the custom typography), but InDesign is best for doing the page layout, especially laying out a book.

You are probably well beyond the ideas I present below, but this is how I have gone about creating my self-published books.

The first thing I do is create a dummy version of the book (using blank printer paper) to indicate what content goes on each page. The dummy I am showing here (with the actual printed book) is gathered together into what is called a signature:





Small books are typically made up of one signature, while larger high quality books are made up of multiple signatures sewn together.

Signatures consist of what are called flats: flat layouts (double-page spreads) contain content on them organized into none-sequential facing pages. In traditional printing processes theses flats are gathered together and folded into a signature with say for example per my image below, page 1 and page 18 sitting side-by-side:



Any software to which you will be uploading your flat layouts to (double page spreads) will require you to set your pages up as sequential facing pages and your pages won't be folded and sewn together but rather trimmed down the middle and glued together using a process called perfect binding (which is definitely not perfect, because these books don't last as long as sewn books—the glue eventually hardens and deteriorates).

The advantage of making the dummy the old fashioned (preparatory for sewing) way is you get to see and understand the flow of the pages in your book before digitally laying it out. It also helps with your decision making regarding where and how to position illustrations in relation to the text:





As it relates to illustrations, be sure they are properly scanned at hi-resolution:

• Size-as-is (physical size as they will appear in the book)
• 300 ppi (points per square inch)
• Color mode: RGB
• .tif or .eps is the preferred hi-res format, but .jpg will work, though understand .jpg is a compressed format and you must make sure the files are truly 300 ppi

Per your dummy, make certain of where you are going to position the images and that the images are large enough so that they can properly bleed off the edge (be cut off properly when the pages are trimmed).

Here are a couple of (sequential facing pages) flat layouts (with trim and fold marks) from my book:

[tooblue]

Blurb does have a good article about self-publishing a children's book. It is more focused on marketing as opposed to the technical aspects of creating the book. Of the Adobe software, InDesign is the easiest to learn and use. Blurb makes it easier by providing you with InDesign templates:

https://www.blurb.com/blog/self-publ...-book-animals/